Page 67 of Enemy Wolf

She shook her head. “No. Living in a town with all that technology you talk about? It’s not for me.”

“It can’t be any worse than a feral pack that ostracizes you to the point of being in the wilderness alone.”

“It’ll be exactly the same.” Nova crossed her arms, tucking her hands inside her sleeves. “A pack who will never accept me because I cannot shift. Or your human population who will find me too wild. At least here I can be on my own terms.”

“You’re vulnerable out here. Unprotected.”

She cocked her head, eying the dead dragon on the ground behind me. “I can handle myself.”

“I know you can,” I sighed. “If there ever comes a time where you don’t want to live like this anymore, just remember you don’t have to be alone.”

Nova lifted her hood and resettled it on her head. “It was good to see you, Orson. Best return to your pack. And your mate.”

She turned and started off through the woods without another word, without a chance for me to ask how the hell she knew I had a mate. Or to refute the statement, since Shiloh decided she was no longer mine.

Although for all I knew, Nova had known since she was born. Like Tryn, she had a way of knowing certain things. She once told me she believed it was the moon’s way of making up for not giving her a wolf that could live outside of her skin.

She hid it well, but I knew she yearned deeply for the ability to shift. That ability defined us as werewolves, and I hated that she felt so fundamentally different and cut off from the rest of us. We bonded over our differences to other wolves, and even if we weren’t close, I wanted to remain a presence in her life.

If I could get off this mountain alive, that was.

I looked at my surroundings, trying to get a sense of something that wasn’t this pain that continued to shoot up my body. The sun was setting and it would be dusk soon. If I really couldn’t shift, I had to get out of here before I froze to death in my naked human skin.

Taking my hands behind me, I pressed against the dragon’s flank, using the support to come to my feet. My left side was pulsing with heat and pain, like Mokir’s ghost was still roasting me with his breath. I kept my weight on my right side as I hobbled up toward the dragon’s head, using his neck spikes like handholds.

I needed a walking stick, something to help hold me up as I made my way down the mountain. Back to my pack. To my mate.

While searching the ground, I wondered how Shiloh would react to learning I’d killed the dragon that terrorized her. She would be relieved, I hoped. She would sleep peacefully at night knowing she was safe.

And as much as I hoped she realized that I had no loyalty to Mokir, that he meant nothing to me and being my brother didn’t change the fact that I wanted to kill him the moment I knew someone was threatening her, I knew chances were slim that she would welcome me back as her mate.

“It’s something I’m prepared to live with,” I said to the open-mouthed dragon’s head lying on the ground. “No thanks to you. But as long as you’re not around to touch my mate, it’s fucking worth it.”

Anger welled up inside me. In a sense, this dragon had brought Shiloh and I together. It was the smell of her fear that sent my protective instincts into overdrive. But he’d also ruined us. He would get no credit for leading me to the love of my life, no space in my head.

But maybe I would take something of him. To always remember what I’d done for her.

Shakily I went down into a crouch, my left hip screaming as I reached into that mouth with so many teeth. I wrapped my hand around one long fang and gave it a hard yank.

The tooth broke off after a few tries, and then I had it, a little trophy of my victory. Looking at it would always be bittersweet, but I accomplished the most important thing; keeping my mate safe.

Once I had the dragon’s tooth, I tested out a few branches on the ground before finding a suitable walking stick, then it was time to get moving.

Fuck me, it was already getting dark. Leaning heavily on my makeshift cane, I went out into the clearing to see what might be left of my clothes. Most of it was burnt tatters, but I pulled on what was left of my pants and shirt, then wrapped the dragon tooth in another scrap of fabric.

Only the setting sun could tell me which way led back toward town, and I started at a glacial pace in that direction. I was alive, but everything hurt and the temperature was dropping fast. Plus, it would be pitch-black soon. I needed my wolf senses and his fur to keep me warm.

I called to my animal within me, but he refused to budge. He already didn’t like the pain we were in and was concerned about a shift making it worse, like Nova had said. Normally shifters healed quickly, and while I was glad to not be on death’s door anymore, my weakened state was still nothing to write home about. I needed to get out of the wilderness if I wanted to survive, and I needed to reach civilization fast.

Darkness came swiftly, and the waning moon’s light did not offer me much guidance. I pulled forth as much as my wolf senses as I could without shifting and still felt totally lost in the dark. And it was really fucking cold again, even with no ice-fire building inside me this time. Just the heat of my normal breaths and my chattering teeth.

The cold just made all my aches and pains worse. My left side was screaming, my head pounded, and I could no longer feel my fingers and toes. It was starting to dawn on me that my sister’s healing was all for naught. I could still very well die out here.

The pain, the cold, all of it, made it impossible to tune into my senses and keep track of where I was going. I tripped over something, a rock, a root, I didn’t fucking know because my feet were numb, and went tumbling.

I curled up and tried to roll down the terrain, but it felt like getting stabbed over and over on my bad side. Something hard finally stopped me, a boulder or a tree, who the hell knew? Running my frozen fingers over myself, I felt a warm, sticky wetness on my forehead. Great, so I was bleeding again. Sorry, sis. All that effort for nothing.

I relaxed into my position, utterly exhausted and numb. This was it for me. It was a shit deal and honestly embarrassing that I would’ve succumbed to the elements instead of fighting with a dragon. But I truly could not go on any longer. All my strength was being wasted on shivering and my chattering teeth.

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